Welcome to my trip down the culinary road at YUM YUM PIGGY'S BUM!

ENGLISH-STYLE CRAB CAKES

Oh, I have a longing for seafood now that summer is approaching. I seriously have a craving for some yummy superfresh fish and crab to barbeque or some gorgeous fried squid to gobble up. Miss Hong Kong where I remember walking past tanks of crab, lobster and fish and picking exactly what was going to be cooked for my dinner. Yes, I am serious about food, blame my parents for influencing me to this extent.

A convenient alternative to fresh crab

Beggars can’t be choosers as I don’t live near the sea plus my food budget isn’t that high at the moment so I decided to compromise and make do with tinned crab. I know it’s not the best thing to use but it’s a reasonable choice in my circumstances. If you can access freshly cooked crab, great! Go ahead and use it instead of canned crab. I decided to make crab cakes as wanted something light and fresh tasting to eat.

Tried a crab cake recipe from a young English chef, Jason Atherton, who has won a load of awards and recently published his recipe in the Independent newspaper. English crab cakes tend to combine mashed potato with crab meat while American ones generally use breadcrumbs instead. I found that you have to be gentle when handling these crab cakes. Thought it would be good to compare coating half the crab cakes with Japanese panko breadcrumbs to the remainder without any breadcrumb coating. If you want to use breadcrumbs, panko or not, you need a beaten egg to dip the crab cake into before placing in a bowl of breadcrumbs. The egg helps the breadcrumbs to stick to the crab cake.

For those not familiar with panko breadcrumbs, they have a very pleasing texture compared to normal breadcrumbs, kind of like, more crisper and lighter. They are used to coat pork and chicken pieces, fried and eaten with Japanese curry, it’s very popular over in Japan, almost like a comfort food for them. You can buy these breadcrumbs from Chinese supermarkets.

After comparing with and without panko breadcrumbs, I thought both types were great tasting, however the texture of the breadcrumbs gives them a better edge so I’m happy eating crab cakes coated with panko.

Chilling the crab mixture is essential otherwise they tend to fall apart easily. You have to work quickly when shaping the crab cake patties and handle gently when shallow frying, only turn once otherwise there’s a risk you might break the crab cake. Jason Atherton’s recipe was fairly easy and tasted light and fluffy but I cut back on the ground black pepper seasoning (1 tsp to 1/2 tsp) so that the crab flavour was more dominant.

These are great to make well in advance and make a lovely starter when served with salad, I combined watercress and spinach leaves with a few scattered coriander leaves with a lime, soy sauce and olive oil dressing. I added lime wedges to squeeze over the crab cakes and added a dollop of sweet chilli sauce. YUM!